The Internet has become a major source of news and information for very large numbers of people. In particular, millions of Internet users browse the World Wide Web (WWW) to obtain HyperText Markup Language (HTML) documents using the HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP). Many people now receive more news and information from the Internet WWW sites than from traditional information sources such as television. The WWW portion of the Internet is an excellent medium for news and information since the WWW Internet sites can provide information to users on-demand. Specifically, Internet users can immediately request the exact information they are interested in when ever they wish from WWW Internet sites.
However, the use of the Internet WWW as a news distribution does suffer from a number of deficiencies. One serious problem is that the limited bandwidth of most Internet connections severely limits the amount of information delivered. Most Internet users access the Internet through a telephone-based dial-up modem at speeds of 56 kps per second or less. With such limited bandwidth available, most Internet based WWW sites only deliver text and static images. When video information delivered through 56K Internet connections, the video information is compressed so heavily such that only small low-resolution video images are delivered at a low frame rate. For users that are more familiar to broadcast quality television video, highly compressed Internet distributed video is not worth viewing unless the content is extremely desirable.
To improve upon the performance of the Internet, many telecommunication providers are now offering high-bandwidth connections for the “last mile” to an Internet user's residence. Cable television providers are now offering cable modem Internet service that use cable television wiring to deliver broadband Internet service. Similarly, telephone companies are rolling out Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) services that provide broadband Internet service. Although these broadband data connections provide additional bandwidth, such broadband connections only address the “last mile” bandwidth problem associated with sending rich multi-media information across the Internet. Many other problems will continue to exist. For example, the point-to-point nature of Internet communication limits large-scale video deliver. Most Internet communication occurs in a unicast manner wherein a unique communication connection is established between each information server and each Internet client. Since each Internet client requires its own connection, the bandwidth requirement for serving information grows linearly with the number of Internet clients being served. Furthermore, each Internet client that requests service adds additional load to the server systems that service information. To serve rich multimedia information to a large number of client systems, a large powerful server farm is required. It is therefore quite expensive from the server end in both communication costs and computer costs to serve large amounts of rich multi-media information.
Due to the above-described problems associated with Internet delivery of multimedia information, additional data deliver systems are being developed. An example of another data delivery system can be found in the patent application entitled “A Broadband Data Broadcasting Service”, filed on Apr. 16, 1999, having Ser. No. 09/293,594. Although such systems provide highly desirable features, the Internet will still remain an interesting medium. It would therefore be desirable to provide a multi-media rich information system that is similar to the Internet in terms of on-demand access of interesting information but without the bandwidth problems associated with the Internet network system.